The Friends of Dupré Library will hold their Annual Book Sale from November 10-12. The sale will take place on the first floor of the Edith Garland Dupré Library, located at 400 East St. Mary Boulevard on the UL campus.

UL alumna Amanda Anderson, now an English instructor at Washington State CC in Marietta OH has continued a tradition she experienced as graduate student at UL: she has organized students and staff there to read books that have been banned at various times and places across the United States. The event is part of Banned Books Week, an annual event held to show support for First Amendment rights and to promote the free exchange of ideas.

Ernest J. Gaines, writer-in-residence emeritus at the University of Louisiana, will give his first public reading at the university’s Ernest J. Gaines Center on Tuesday, Oct. 18 at 2 p.m. Gaines is the author of eight books of fiction, including the classics The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and A Lesson before Dying.

Dallas — UL alumnus Gary Lavergne’s account of the struggle to desegregate the University of Texas law school, Before Brown: Heman Marion Sweatt, Thurgood Marshall and the Long Road to Justice was the top winner for nonfiction at the Texas Institute of Letters’ (TIL) awards banquet Saturday, April 30, 2011.

The University of Louisiana Press, in the Center for Louisiana Studies has won the 2010 Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History for Lincoln in New Orleans: The 1828—1831 Flatboat Voyages and Their Place in History written by Richard Campanella, a Tulane research professor and associate director of the Center for Bioenvironmental Research.

In celebration of National Poetry Month, Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne is announcing a special event Just Listen to Yourself: The Louisiana Poet Laureate Presents Louisiana Poets. Louisiana's Poet Laureate, UL English professor Darrell Bourque is hosting the event from noon to 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 13, at the State Library.

Baton Rouge: In celebration of Black History Month, the State Library of Louisiana will hold a program focusing on the literary aspect of black history at noon on Wednesday, Feb. 16, at the State Library of Louisiana's seminar center, located at 701 N. Fourth St. in Baton Rouge. The program is free and open to the public.